Caffe Nonna — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

The only reason I am giving them a 4 star review is due to location and size of the restaurant. So here we go!

This is not a restaurant that you will take your wife or love one for you to impress her with a fancy area, fancy restaurant, and excellent atmosphere. It simply isn’t.

The area is located in sort of a known/unknown area. I have been living in TN for over 15 years now and in I lived in green hills for 5 years and even though these two areas are very close to each other, when one lives in green hills one barely goes to west end, unless you are a college student.

Anyways, enough said about the are or the presentation of the restaurant.

Let’s talk about the food. So my wife and I started craving for a good Italian restaurant because we have been watching The Sopranos and If you have not seen The Sopranos once you do you’ll realize that all they do is sit around and eat all day long.

The Sopranos is always showing this amazing Italian food, especially Carmela’s home meals and Artie’s restaurant.

So we started searching on google for “best Italian restaurants in Nashville” the list is long and very subjective. So we automatically ignore those places that had anything above 500 likes. We felt we needed to do this because many restaurants with 500+ likes have been a round Nashville for a long time and many of them were chain restaurants.

After a few minutes looking at pictures of food and places, we found Cafe Nona. In one of the reviews for Cafe Nona I quickly read “vodka creamy spicy sauce” which immediately caught my attention. The picture of this vodka creamy spicy sauce looked like an explosion of flavors in your mouth and it was!!!

Yes, the parking was awful (like most places in Nashville nowadays) the restaurant was small and nothing to brag about, but the food, oh my goodness, the food was made by Italian angels (but they were Hispanic angels cause I heard them speaking Spanish and I am Hispanic).

I ordered the option they have where they let you get your choice of pasta, your choice of sauce (you have to try the vodka creamy spicy sauce!) and your choice of protein. My wife ordered the seafood Angelina (I believe it was called) which was also a wonderful meal, with a great balance of seafood flavor, cream sauce with tomatoes in it, etc. The meal I had, I ordered with capellini pasta (because is thin and it would not take too much to make it flavorful, hence why I ordered it), the marvelous vodka creamy spicy sauce, shrimp, and Italian sausage (the Italian sausage was a bit spicy) overall all the ingredients came together as if Artie from the Sopranos were cooking. If you have been in Italy you will think of a trattoria as you go to Cafe Nona. Nothing wrong with this since many times a trattoria has better food than any fancy restaurant out there.

P.S.

I know it is written creamy spicy vodka...

Came here for my birthday. My boyfriend had set reservations for us for 7:30. We got there about 5 minutes early and was told there were no tables available when there were 2 in plain sight. Waited a good 15 minutes to be seated. Was given a menu to order a drink while we waited, then the waitress just disappeared on us. When we got seated, it took a good five minutes or more before our waiter came over then realized we didn’t have our waters that should have already been set out like all the other tables. Our waiter was very nice and quick to get us our waters and bread though. We ordered our drinks and an appetizer. The appetizer was pretty good. But it wasn’t hot. We ordered our food. My boyfriend got the lamb shank. And I did the mix and match pasta. His shank he said was cooked well but was far from hot. Wasn’t cold, but definitely wasn’t hot. My bolognese was just okay… I’ve had much better in other places though. We were tired of being bumped by other patrons and waiters (because the place is THAT small.) so we wanted to get our dessert to go and leave. We ordered two cannolis and were only brought one. They brought our other out to us. We paid and left. When we got home, we decided to eat our cannolis and they tasted like the filling was for key lime pie or something.. absolutely disgusting. Cannoli is quite literally my most favorite dessert there is. And I have NEVER had a cannoli taste like that. I was so very disappointed in this place because of how good the reviews are. I don’t know if it was just an off night or what, but I don’t know that we’ll be back. We did not like being cramped in like sardines for what should be a decent...

Excited to try this place based upon the reviews... unfortunately even though the service was respectable, the food was mediocre at best - when comparing it to true Italian fare AND more importantly, COVID precautions, while followed with the staff wearing masks, couples and groups of four were sat within 2 feet of each other. My wife and I had a couple of four sit 2 feet from us at the table next to us. When looking out at the patio, same story - apparently COVID is a hoax to them?

In regards to the food, if you want true Italian food that actually has depth of flavor and taste good, go to Giovanni‘s in Nashville. All the dishes here lacking salt. The mussels, there were only about 15 in the bowl, and the sauce was quite watered down. There was no depth of flavor. On the bottom of the dish was a heaping piece of bread that was soaked in the sauce. I don’t know if this was to add volume to the dish, but I don’t know anyone who would want to get to the bottom of a dish and eat a soggy piece of bread. When mussels are served in this manner, the bread should be placed in a small portion of the dish or on the side, grilled and/or toasted for your dipping pleasure.

The lasagna, we have heard rave reviews, however, as above, it was lacking salt. It was flat in flavor.

The seafood pasta, the sauce was good, had a little spice which is nice. The seafood was cooked well.

I honestly would not recommend this restaurant which is sad because I had high hopes based upon the reviews as well as the awards they have one...